Claudine Housen, Staff ReporterWESTERN BUREAU: ONE OF two HIV-positive boys who had been turned away from a private school in St. Ann,
will start in September, HIV advocates say.
The plight of the boys came to national attention on February 11 of this year when it was reported that they were booted from school because of their HIV-positive status.
"The Ministry of Education made an arrangement for the (first) school to take the younger child (who is eight)," said Mrs. Donna Marie Hamilton-Ross, chairperson of the St. James Parish AIDS Action Committee. One school has agreed to take him, "but not until September," she said.
The school is saying that the older boy is two months too told and therefore they cannot take him.
FINAL DECISIONS
"They have taken a legal loophole to say that the older one couldn't go but he was accepted at first," Mrs. Hamilton-Ross commented. "(He) has lesions so they are afraid. Plus they resent the way that it (the situation) was handled."
Under the Education Ministry's HIV Management Policy for schools, no school should turn students away for this reason. Private institutions, although they work within the guidelines and framework of the Ministry of Education, may exercise their own options.
"The school thinks we should have left it alone and gone somewhere else," Mrs. Hamilton-Ross said.
While somewhat appeased by the prospect that one of the two children will get access to education, Mrs. Hamilton-Ross said the children are still not in school.
"The students are still out of school so we are getting tutors for them and signing them up for activities that they can learn from," said Mrs. Hamilton-Ross, who stressed her concern for the older of the two boys who, "needs the fellowship."
Mrs. Hamilton-Ross criticised what she cited as the duality of the Jamaican society.
"Behave responsibly," she said. "Show that you are part of a community and accept the fact that we all live around HIV and are all affected (by it)."
